Has India been chasing the wrong Ajmal all along?

ISLAMABAD:

A probe into the 2008 Mumbai attacker Ajmal Ameer Kasab took a surprising turn this week when the headmaster of the school that the attacker had supposedly attended testified that the ‘real’ Ajmal was alive.

Kasab, who was part of the terror squad which had killed 166 people and injured 300 others on November 26, 2008, had been convicted in May 2010 before being hanged in a Pune jail in November 2012. Indian authorities had presented his alleged credentials to Pakistan for further investigations.

But Abdul Qayyum, the headmaster of the government elementary School in Faridkot, in Dipalpur tehsil of Okara, told a trial court on December 9 that the documents presented by India to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to prove Kasab’s Pakistani origin in fact refer to Ajmal Ameer Khokhar – who was still alive.

“The Ajmal, about whom I had testified before the court and handed over records to the FIA, is not Ajmal Kasab. The Ajmal about whom I have recorded my statement is an ordinary villager,” he told the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi.

Qayyum added that Kasab, whose photographs he had seen in the media, had never attended his school and that the records he had provided to the FIA related to Khokhar.

He said that Khokhar was alive and was currently working in Lahore, adding that the villager had also met his colleague Muddasir Mehmood Lakhvi – another key witness in the Mumbai attack case.

Incidentally, Lakhvi in his testimony had supported Qayyum’s statement. On May 7, 2014, Lakhvi had told the court that Khokhar was alive and could be produced before the court.

After the news emerged that the Mumbai attacker reportedly belonged to the village of Faridkot in Pakistan, FIA Assistant Director Tasarraf Hussain had visited deputy district education office in Dipalpur and sought all schooling record of Ajmal, son of Muhammad Ameer.

“I handed over the record of Ajmal to the assistant director FIA. I presented the admission and discharge certificate, which was taken into possession… in the presence of Muhammad Muddasir,” Qayyum said, adding that he and Muddasir had signed the memo.

Details of the case surfaced after the Indian media reported that a key witness in the case had turned hostile.

However, documents available with The Express Tribune showed a different picture. Contrary to reports in the Indian media, Lakhvi and Qayyum had recorded their statements.

Meanwhile, an FIA official familiar with developments in the case said that materially the revelations had not affected the case because Kasab has already been convicted and hanged in India.

“This trial is only about the facilitators of the attack.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2015.